Sick
by Gender Outlaw
Summary: What if the Fox Demon never existed? [.. he doesn't think Naruto can survive without them.] AU.
1. Chapter 1

Sometime near the middle of September, Konoha got sick.

Everyone from Villagers to Shinobi each grew a severe rattling cough and bone-chilling colds. Their faces flushed and their bodies grew weak. The disease traveled on from human to human, seemingly having no taste for any of the animal life.

Konoha was quarantined. No one was permitted to enter or leave the village as the contagious illness only worsened. The source of funds dried up, eventually even food had to be rationed out until only one meal a day was permitted.

Shinobi rations kept them all alive.

No one could tell exactly from where this disease had mysteriously originated. Or even exactly when it had started. For it was the lesser individuals living in the low down corners of the earth who had taken ill first, and where nobody would lay concern.

But when the plague spread to the prominent Clans of Konoha, then it was noticed. The spread didn't take too long, but it's effect was permanent and disastrous. They named the sickness _Nine Tails_, after the nine great Clans to fall victim to it.

The population of Konoha was reduced to a third of it's members.

But one man managed to save them all. By voluntaring to submit his body for experimentation on the disease, he had managed to help them find a cure. Even though it cost him his life.

The Fourth died for his village. On this day, Naruto was born.

* * *

Sasuke's entire family had fallen ill to the diease. He had just gotten the bone-wrecking cough when the cure was distributed. But even with that, his parents never really recovered right.

They got cold in the evenings and sometimes couldn't wake up in the morning. Sasuke could remember desperately shaking his mother's arm only to receive a half-awake turn of the lips.

It was so lonely. He could hear his voice echoing against the walls, bringing with it a stagnant air that lingered in the chilling quiet.

One day, Sasuke came home to find what was left of his clan lying dead in the street, covered in their own blood.

Itachi smiled.

* * *

Mizuki laughed at Naruto, mocking him.

The little boy was crouched in the corners the old wooden shack made, curled around a scroll almost as big as he was. The shadows almost hid him. If only his pursurer wasn't right in front of him, radiating a killer's lust..

But he wouldn't believe it!

Naruto's teacher couldn't be true. That had to be a lie beneath those sneering lips staring at him. There was no way he was only ordinary.

Naruto was special. He was _important_.

He would be somebody.

* * *

Kakashi smiled down at the child, and rubbed the boy's blonde head.

"Who were you talking to just now?" He'd asked, his eye a voice of amusement.

Naruto looked up, all brilliant smiles.

_"Kyuubi." _

* * *

**Note: **I blame this entirely on a line from NoNoWriter's story, _Running Thin_. Which said; _"Do I have to be high or unconscious before you can talk to me!"_ The author's ID is: 1128683.

Simply put, the _Kyuubi _(as it means _Nine Tails_) was the disease that struck Konoha. Mizuki only targeted Naruto because he was convenient. He failed the Graduation exam, and was so eager to pass that he'd do anything. Even steal the forbidden Scroll of Seals.

What Mizuki probably told him was something along the lines of _"You're worthless. You'll never amount to anything. What a total waste of a life."_ Naruto didn't like that. But without the demon chakra, he might not have beaten Mizuki. If he didn't, an Anbu probably found him, or Iruka. Who knows.

He might have tried the test again the next year and passed then, or never became a shinobi at all.

Maybe Kakashi is just passing Naruto in the street and hears him talking to himself, and, being a curious one, asked the little boy who he was speaking to.

It could be a split personality, or a desire to be noticed. That he was so lonely he had to create someone just to talk to. Naruto's mind is a curious thing..


	2. Chapter 2

Kakashi worries over Naruto.

He knows he shouldn't, at heart. That the boy is more than capable enough of dealing with his own monsters in whatever closets he has. But he just can't help it. The Third doesn't tell him anything, and that makes him all the more afraid, because it seems like Sandaime _knows something_.

Kakashi often catches Naruto deep in conversation with himself. Arguing and laughing, as if another were speaking.

It scares him, if he were to ever admit it. It scares him shitless.

Because, Naruto is the Cure. He is what was created by Yondaime's sacrifice.

Naruto still has pieces of the Plague inside him. He has to. The only way they could know that the Cure worked, was to test it out. Naruto will quite possibly always have those pieces inside him, and Kakashi .. he doesn't think Naruto can survive without them.

So Kakashi worries. He can see underneath the underneath.

* * *

The villagers still hate him.

Before, Naruto never knew why. They would stare at him from the edges of doorways and behind barriers, afraid to touch him, to come _near_ him. As if his very presence was deadly.

Now he understands.

There is a .. thing inside him. Something hungry, that eats flesh. It ate before, apparently. That is why everyone is afraid.

Iruka tries to help. He doesn't quite get it though.

Iruka thinks Naruto is normal. He tries to see past his parent's death, but it's hard.

The Plague tore away at the skin, at the soul and the person beneath until there was nothing left, not a _damned_ thing. Their eyes turned red, bleeding out and cutting themselves into slits and they ..

Sometimes, in the right light, Iruka thinks he can see red in Naruto's eyes.

* * *

And Naruto is screaming - it's not a verbal sound, something that can be put in words and classified. He is .. his yell is more a thing of utter rage dying animals let loose when they know they are cornered on the hunt; a thing that is both hollow and echoing at the same time - and if you've ever done it yourself, you'd know how it went.

Kakashi's team is outmatched - not outnumbered, but outmatched. After all. It's just one opponent.

But this is the Missing-Nin Kisame and he is slicing with his sword and laughing and taunting and Kakashi thinks he could take him alone if there weren't these _Genins_ and ..

He knows Itachi is nearby too. He must be.

Kakashi wasn't paying attention to what Kisame was saying, but Naruto was apparently. His eyes grow dark and narrow - vertically - and it looks like they're bleeding from the inside out.

Someone screams in fright, but Kakashi doesn't think it's him. (It's not Naruto.)

* * *

Gai trains his students as best he can.

He wishes they could go on more missions so their skills can be even further sharpened, but Suna _is_ the strongest country afterall, and there's no arguing that they have the pick of the litter. (Figuritively-speaking.)

Neji tries (and Gai is impressed) but as each day passes painfully slowly, Neji only gets colder and colder. His stares are like ice now, and he finds amusement in nothing.

It's a change from before; when Neji first came he simply tolerated the antics. It wasn't impossible to see a smile flirt across his face, and he even exchanged in friendly banter (even if most of it was cutting). But now ..

Neji declares _Fate_ unchangable, and .. since they get last choice in the missions, Gai's _Genins_ usually end up with the hardest and most difficult work a _Genin_ can do for the lowest pay possible.

It drains on them.

* * *

Orochimaru is plotting.

Moreof, in actuallity he is _planning_, but he likes the way the word _plotting_ sounds instead, and it means he gets to give a fun little evil chuckle in the middle of whatever he's doing and no one really minds too much because it helps his _'I am E-vil and eat little babies for breakfast'_ image, even if it isn't true.

Well, the babies part. He likes to think he's evil too.

Orochimaru wants his village to suffer. He wants to topple Konoha from the inside out.

He thinks he will disguise himself. There's this new jutsu that he's just finished perfecting afterall..

But he needs to steal a body first. Someone important. Somebody .. close to Sarutobi.

Step One; get inside. Step Two; Kill the Third Hokage. Step Three; Impersonate him and _crumble_ Konoha.

They had their chance.

* * *

(**Note: **Suna is the strongest country now. Because Konoha had to close it's borders for the quarantine, and because so many of them died, they just lost all of their strength and forces.)


	3. Chapter 3

Iruka quickly pulled back his hand, rubbing across the knuckles to ease the pain away. "Naruto you're burning up.."

He watched the young boy, a desire, a _need _to help worming it's way through his chest but he _couldn't.._He couldn't help the insane.

Naruto's hair was too long and his face too pale. He stared down at his shoes and didn't even make a motion of acknowledgement to show that he knew Iruka was there. His eyes were watery with deep bags around them.

He looked up, sniffing almost absently .. and took off. A light and casual walk with uneven sways back and forth as if the world was tilting against him.

Iruka just watched him go.

* * *

Kakashi was choking in the underbrush and Sasuke made no move to help, instead choosing to slip his sebon back into the equipment pouch hanging against his waist.

Hakate spasmed and tried to grab at his throat but his arms were still imobile and they lay there, useless.

Naruto sat on his knees beside the older man, and watched, his head titled to the side in a posture that implied he was _listening.._Kakashi jerked his head back and forth, _asking_ for help. He struggled to move his arms again and again, but they refused.

Naruto tilted his head in the other direction, and, lazily reached to the other's mask. Then tugged the needles out of his throat.

He sat back on his haunches and continued watching, as if to say, _Please. Continue.._

* * *

The lightning was poor; due in part to the ill-placed windows making a tiny cut against the upper corner of the wall, and the infectous dust that was _breeding_ in the room. Naruto picked up a different beaker, setting the one he had been holding on a rack designed for this before him.

The table was filled with various bottles and liquids, in many shapes and sizes. Naruto was just tall enough to reach across it with ease.

Ibiki, who was standing behind him and keeping both eyes trained on the boy, was not. The table would have hit his thighs, being at no easy height for him.

The beaker in Naruto's left hand was bubbling furiously, boiling so heavy that large splashes were falling out of the bottle and sizzling through the table to attack the floor.

He poured the liquid from the right into the left, and it calmed.

Then he drank from the glass.

* * *

"It's poison.." Sakura drew the cloth her hand held away from her nose, wiping at it instead with the other. The smell burned through her nostril hairs, threatening dangerously.

She sneezed on impuse and wipped her nose again.

There were more clothes in the small pile beside the bed, and she dug through them singularly, taking more time with each item than the one before. She pulled them out one at a time, turning them first inside out..

Shikamaru walked across the one-room apartment to the kitchen section and reached over the sink. The sun was nearly set and the day was starting to cool off with a steady gust.

He shut the window and walked back to Sakura, kneeling next to Naruto's bed.


	4. Chapter 4

Kisame is infected.

He holds his arm with disdain, snarling at the bite mark there. Streaks of flesh pucker and crumble, and the puss oozing out gives off a rancid smell. He flicks sharply at a larger clump with a sharp nail, but the mess there clings to his finger, numbing it.

Itachi's eyes follow him from the other side of the campfire, and Kisame keeps Samehada close.

* * *

Naruto was the _Cure_. Is. The answer. The solution.

Konoha without a Naruto is only suffering and ending. The world looked when Naruto was born. They watched the _plague_ tear through the Leaf, cripple and condem, with fearful eyes. Half expecting it to escape and attack the rest, to flood through all the earth with unstoppable force.

Naruto led them out of the darkness and light. Itachi has seen the boy's hands shake when he eats. Itachi sees the sickness in him.

The Atasuki see only the _Cure. _The immortality, the power, the cure-all healing. The redemption against all sins.

If the cure can be separated from the disease, then the disease can be separated from the cure. They will rule the world with this. They will rid all evils..

* * *

It is no secret that Itachi hates sick people.

His hate does not consume him, though, like an unkept fire. It lines the edges of his soul, bleeding into his eyes. He becomes one with his hate, leads it, directs it. He hates illness because he can.

Itachi rises up like a prayer, an unholy saint.

He does not need Zabuza's lengthed blade to strike at distant opponents, at comrades. His hands move on their own, his body smoothly following after. He is the silky spider, he is sticky residue.

Itachi is the death of Kisame.

He leaves the Akatsuki, of his own accord.

* * *

Kakashi is only human.

He does not mind spending time with Naruto, not really. The boy may be an interesting child, but he is still a child. (No matter _how _Kakashi's spine and neck tingle in sharp chilling sort of after-way when that boy wears such a certain face and starts laughing - there is _nothing _to laugh at.)

Despite all this. Because Kakashi sometimes has a soft spot for children, admiring innocence. It is such a fragile trait.

But the man has certain _responsiblities_ and part of those include caring for and teaching his new _team_. He may not be the best teacher, but damned if he's going to let those under him perish needlessly.

A team of which Naruto is not a part of.

The ill child failed his last chance to graduate. Sometimes Kakashi wonders if Naruto really understands things .. Understood the three strikes policy. Understood what exactly he was _doing_ in a shinobi school.

It is a right pity, to be sure. But, he was lucky. Naruto should be thankful - there are worse things that happen to a shinobi than Naruto. He's lucky to even be free in Konoha after stealing the scroll.

Kakashi wonders if Naruto realizes just how far his punishment extends.

* * *

Sarutobi does not look well.

There is no cough in him (as of yet), and his face is only a lighter shade of pale than what it should be, but the very act of _not looking well_ brings about much worry and fret.

He is quarantined for his own good, of course.

* * *

Naruto knows Sakura and Shikamaru were in his apartment.

He knows this because he was there too. He had squeezed his small body into the bottom cupboards of his kitchen - the ones that rest above his floor and are crooked and don't close right.

He held the door closed with one hand, and watched them through the cracks while they rooted through his stuff and called for him.

* * *

Ibiki does not know Naruto.

They have, in essence, never really meet. Not in the true sense of the word.

There was a moment, at one time, where they happened to look in the same direction in the same room, but that was after Naruto's failed attempt to graduate and Ibiki was _sorry_ but he _did _have to do his _job._It's a sad affair that Misuki managed to escape. Really.

But that doesn't change what is. And what is, is that Naruto is late for his monthly session.. Something of which the Council demanded.

Naruto is lucky.

They could have locked up him somewhere deep and dark. Never to see the light of outside _again. _Because, afterall, he still has the Plague in him. And it is as active as ever ..

Ibiki signals the Anbu.


	5. Chapter 5

Hot.

It is winter in Konoha, one of the coldest they've seen yet. Shinboi bundled up like preserved meat, all fight against the cold and shivering toes and sweat that leaks out into ice with the wind.

He is hot, so hot his forehead steams against the window.

The market has been closed, stalls wrapped up tightly with cloth and wooden walls, clasped shut and latched in place. Temari passes it by for the last time today, and remembers her home. How they shut down the same when the sands came like monstrous gusts of fury.

She moves carefully over the iced roofs to her destination - where she will stay - the streets being too full of ice to make leeway through. Now is not a day for travel.

White piles up outside Naruto's window, it is so heavy so light, it blows in his eyes when he pulls the pane open, sweating fingers leaving smudges against the glass.

He exhales, breathes, and the frost dances into his lungs, dying quickly in the flames there.

Kakashi watches him from the rooftop across the way. He is wrapped in only one cloak, but has worn layers and settles down on the ledge with gloved fingers and his book. He does not need to see Naruto to know he is there.

Naruto leans over the frame, his hands held fast to the sill, and stares in fasination at a white Konoha.

The trees lining the perimeter of the village are still higher than any he's ever seen - not that he's seen others - but their branches hang low, so ladened with snow that they are almost bowed enough to touch their roots. The white grows in place of leaves, and it has wrapped around the trunks like a fast moving vine.

Ice and snow piles against all he can see, steel railings and wooden buildings merely outlines against the mass.

There is a drift of snow as high as his ceiling directly below where Naruto hangs, and he leans out until his knees are all that keep him from falling. He is unconcerned with the height and he stares in uprupt fasination. Horror? What is this..?

Kakashi turns another page and tucks one of his hands beneath his arms, the icy wind chills his fingers and nearly freezes them solid. He can hear Naruto breathing - either the air is that still, or the boy is that excitable.

The wind blows against Naruto's chest, he has no shirt.

He leans out further still, as if to taste what still falls from the sky.

He falls. And lands in the pile beneath. The snow makes no sound as he becomes part of it. His feet are bare and his legs only clothed in one pair of shorts, so they kick out easily against what has little to hold it.

The drift breaks and out Naruto comes. Two feet, three feet, maybe more hinders his movement. His legs fight against the obstruction, the snow. Could this be what it is like to walk through water..?

Kakashi looks down, unhappy. He has to move to continue watching Naruto.

He carefully stands, skill and practice making his feet stick to winter glass, and steps lightly to the cliff - the edge of the roof. Ice shards hang down like blades below him, and he kneels there, book in one hand. He is careful not to apply too much chakra, less he fall too.

Naruto looks up at the sky, and can not see the sun. Where heaven must lie, a shroud of grays and whites lay almost within his reach. He stretches his arm upwards, as if to touch it, and tries.

The snow melts against his legs, under his toes. He is _hot_, so hot.

He is sicker than usual.

Naruto does not feel sick, but he remembers Iruka's hand, and thinks that being sick must be something unpleasant. He does not know what sick is, but when the med-nin checked him again after his visit to Ibiki, she was greatly alarmed.

She had held the hand that touched him in a tight grip with the other, and stared at him with wide eyes. Perhaps that is sickness?

Naruto doesn't know the meaning of this. He wants to ask Kyuubi.

Kyuubi wants to ask the ghosts.

* * *

_Hot.  
__Motionless at the window.  
__Forehead beaded with a line of fevered moons, swelling  
__and then dropping  
__to the floor-  
__Parched.  
__Flace flushed. Room flushed, red shadows licking up the walls,  
__the ceiling,  
__you briared in it like a rose on a spit, rubiate,  
__carnadine-  
__Breathing.  
__With your mouth half open_

FEVER, Dana Levin


	6. Chapter 6

Kakashi stood on the bridge and watched what was left of his team pick themselves up from the cold stone.

Sasuke, proud and impassive as ever, let his broken arm swing with a lingering ease of detachment. The boy's face was marred with blood, but hopefully he'd regain use of that eye.

Kiba slid his foot back in instinct, careful of the wounds in his thighs and side. His hand reached out to his companion and Akumaru, still alive, growled a reply. They bleed as one.

But Hinata.. Hinata was dead.

Their bodies sagged as weary grew like a stone over them, their muscles torn and used beyond all relief. Kakashi still could not rise, but he tried all the same. Hinata tried, he could too.

Kisame grinned at them in a most feral way, and gurgled with joy words that had no name. He was playing with breakable toys. Itachi, satisfied, turned his back on the group and left. It was a waste.

* * *

He could hear into the dark.

Kyuubi was calling out to him, something about a city of lights, and Naruto reached out abscent-mindedly to stroke a nearby fern. His head was ringing with what he could not say, and it made him smile.

The day was already setting into night, and he had wandered far away in search of fun. No one had looked for him, so no one knew he was gone.

He was wild, and he was free, and he stared up at the rising moon with teeth in his eyes and called.

The heat rose around him. He was burning from the inside out. It was fever, it was blood, it made his skin burn and bleed. Naruto saw only red, and stood. The sun, ever as bright and full of fire, was straight ahead of him. He followed it, as it died.

* * *

Naruto burned through Kisame, burned without cease. It was physical, it was mental, Kisame's mind roared as he struggled to find his feet on reality. He stumbled and swore and lost himself.

Naruto swallowed the blood on his teeth and bit again. He was feeling a strange sort of hunger, new to him. And he wondered if Kyuubi felt it too..

Kakashi's team was wise enough to walk away, what remained of them. Sasuke held his teacher's unmoving form drapped over his back. He wanted nothing to do with this, he longed to turn and chase his brother to what ends of the earth there might be. But an order was an order.. for now.

His legs buckled more than once, and he struggled to see. He could feel unconciousness seeping up on him like a plague.

Momentarily, he wondered if this was what Naruto felt everyday. If Naruto could ever be sane in that. But the boy was more than he needed to deal with, and he, gasping just to breath, inched towards Konoha.

Kiba, as useless as it was, dragged Hinata home. He would not abandon a friend, no one should. Akumaru hindered more than was of any help, but it was the effort that counted.

And, Naruto, when he tired of his feast, would follow them all the way there. Seeing in their backs a sort of fire in his mind. It glowed and burned and he giggled as it waved at him.

* * *

There was no real excuse for loosing someone like that. The dangers of such a weapon breaking loose, such a contaminent cracking open, was far too real.

Naruto had no Anbu escort before, but now, after following Kakashi all the way into the debriefing room and even to his house, he would get one. There was no excuse for a leak like that. If the real horror and dangers of the virus, Nine Tails, ever began to spread again..

There would be less than no excuse. There would be nothing.


	7. Chapter 7

Naruto was born a healer.

He was extraodinary in this one, simple, abilty.

The Kyuubi did not heal him - he healed the Kyuubi.

When Naruto's mother placed the small babe on the operating table, her eyes could not meet the Medic-nin's. But Naruto was already healing from the loss of his umbilical cord. He was healing from his birth, his skin flushed with new life.

This trait was strong in him and, with use - like a muscle - strengthed to unimaginable heights.

He healed bad food before it contaiminated his stomach.

He healed scratches before they left marks.

He healed the bones before they even broke.

The pain was a fleeting dream, a whimsical muttering, only as real as the rest of the world. Just a whisper, a shifting moving cloud. It blocked out little light because it did not exist. Nothing, to Naruto, existed.

The cancer, the disease, the vein and the evil spread like the plague it was beneath Naruto's skin. It expanded and pulsed, bleed and dried.

Naruto reached out .. and touched Chouji's cheek. It was round and fat, and incredibly soft. Human flesh still felt strange to him. His fingers smeared through the blood to find the wound.

Chouji stood in silence, and in fear. He tried not to shake, his mind quivering his body without him even then. This was the contamination, the spread. Would he die too, just from being touched..? Was merely being close enough to breath the same air cause enough to perish?

Naruto's fingers tingled, sparkled with light. A glow came to them from inside, and the boy grinned manically.

Chouji's cheek was healed in instant, red light. He reached up to touch were there was nothing, and almost missed the look.

Naruto widened his mouth, and prepared to bite.

* * *

**Notes**;

1. Dad has broken pieces of bone in his leg. I think there's a shard somewhere near his knee and a couple on the bottom part of his leg - both under skin. That helped the inspiring..  
2. You should see what I dream if you don't think this is weird.

**Thoughts on _Sick_.**

To understand Naruto's world better, first you must know more about the sickness. At the simplest, it's most basic principle is mutation. But this is no mutation that one is happy to gain - you do not benefit from super powers or gain membership into _X-Men_.

In basic, you .. rot away. Your body begins to decay and your mind falls apart. And it is as lovely as it sounds. Flesh peeling, bones actually becoming so brittle that they break and will show themselves through the skin, as fragile as twigs. And it gets worse, more and more gruesome as the disease progresses. But that is not what you need to hear now.

Rather, you should know of the mind. The mind falls to pieces just as easily as the bones, and creates a whole other world unto itself. You begin to live a shifting world of illusions and lies. What is seen with your eyes is never real. What Naruto sees does not exist.

Naruto is the last one cursed with the disease. He is the last only because he is the one who survived. Everyone else has sucumbed to it and withered away. Naruto's natural ability to heal himself is all that has saved him. His life would be forfeit without it.

This ability is something he was born with, and has always had. Over time the constant battle between **_disease_** and **_cure_** has flexed his ablility to heal like a muscle. With use, it became stronger.

That is not to say that Naruto will ever _not_ see what isn't really there. He will quite possibly always be this way, because the disease, once advanced, has no cure. But, perhaps, one day he will learn to see past the illusions? It is uncertain.

In the time of the Kyuubi, the diease was simple. It killed. It destroyed. It rendered life useless, and nothing more.

But, this all changed with the Yondaime. Newly elected to office and newly infected, he had already the decision to make a change and submitted his own body for testing, for genetic experimentation. Many researchers became contaiminated themselves and were lost, but their's is an untold tale. They all died for the _'good of Konoha'_.

I tell you this to let you know how it became. With Naruto, the diease _changed_. If a person had not been infected for too long in this early stage, there was a possiblity of being cured. They could be saved.

You can't imagine, I don't think you can ever imagine, the terror and fear that coated that village and _just_ how desperately people lived. How unkind they became to any with even a hint of illness. In a way, they were all sick.

But, you know, had this never happened - had Konoha never been infected and Naruto never used as an experiment, as a test, as a guinea pig at the tender age of four minutes - he never would have become what he is. (And what he is, is _mad_.) In another world, he could have been ostracized just the same and cast out identically from their society. But _there _he would have risen above it, set a goal and a destination for himself.

This Naruto has struggled just to live, to survive. (And survive he did.) Each breath was a fight for life as his lungs tore themselves asunder again from the pressure of the disease, again and again. And were mended by his ability to heal until it was a battle of _atoms_. Molecules opposing the other daily on a scale unseen.

He is alone in this.

.

* * *

_So he lived so alone and isolated with only himself for comfort that he invented this figure, this personality which no one else knows or can ever know. This was his comfort. _

And this small fact, that no one can ever really understand what is inside that mind, scares so very many.

They are still afraid.


	8. Chapter 8

Kabuto was the weapon, the biological bomb, so to say.

He knew his duty and he was proud to do it. He took the newest experiment into the center of Konoha's marketplace, and being unable to lace the vegetable stands with this new poison, this new disease, without getting caught in the act by passing shinobi..

He drank it himself. And he spread it himself.

Through the air by hanging out in large groups. Through smatterings of blood by fighting opponents he knew he could not beat. Through the water by drinking from the public well. He was efficient, and he was _good_.

At first, the contagion started out small. It was a flu, a cough, an unnoticable itch at the back of the skin.

But there was no opposition. There was no notice of the slowly spreading plague until it was far, far too late. Almost too late for an antidote to make any difference at all. By the time the city of Konoha got started on trying to save themselves, there was almost nothing left to save.

.

And Tsunade was there.

She came in late, she came in last, barely making it through the gates of the city. For miles around the outskirts of Konoha, the land was ravaged. The once tall and glorious trees burned to the quick so that not even their shattered remains could stand like the dead bones of a hand.

There were no birds, there where no animals at all. The streams were blocked and forciablly dried up. For miles the air was stagnant and dead, and even years and years after all of this, you could still smell the sharp, bitter tang of sulfur and ash.

The bodies were burned just outside the city walls in massive piles, smoldering flesh and rolling fluids bubbling and boiling with such toxicity that people grew sick merely walking pass it on the other side of the wall.

But yes, Tsunade was there. She came late, too. Barely in time to help at all. But she was there, even though she actually had to climb, hands and feet, over the walls of the village, a thing that for the first time in existance was unguarded.

The air was silent and filled with something that left a tanging rot against the back of her throat. The wood the walls of the city were made of had started to fall into disrepair from the constant burnings at their base. They cracked, and turned sickly colors, and filled her hands with splinters.

Tsunade was too late to save the Yondaime, too late to save herself, but she did manage to save Naruto, and what was left of Konoha.

Because she too, like the rest of the Medic-nins working on the cure, caught the disease and died.

.

Orchimaru is not interested in Sasuke.

Not so much anymore, atleast. Itachi was an interesting prospect, all that power .. But, even though an insane mind was easier to infiltrate (he thinks), the Uchiha has gone far outside of Orchimaru's reach.

But Naruto .. He is very interested indeed, in Naruto.

The boy has the cure, everyone knows this. It lingers in the backs of Diedara and Sasori's minds as he leads them, but they lay their doubts aside. All the Atasuki lay their doubts aside.

Because Orchimaru is, most of all, confident in himself. He believes that he can remove the disease from Naruto. After all, if the cure can be seperated from him, why not the sickness itself? He wants to possess the boy's body and become a true immortal. Never dying. Never aging. Never falling ill at all.

And even if he can't, well .. Naruto seems to be doing fine enough as it is with both the diease and cure in him at once, does he not? And besides, it would be a very handy natural tool to use against his enemies. Almost as good as the Sharigan, which he still keeps in the back of his mind.

He has heard of Kakashi, who is no natural Uchiha.

.

Kyuubi is in Naruto's head.

Naruto was punished for stealing the Forbidden Scroll by being exiled to Konoha. House-bound, so to say. He is not allowed to leave under any circumstances.

Ibiki is given charge of him, to watch him. Not for growths in maturity, or careful monitoring of health and the such. Ibiki has the task of making sure that Naruto is interrogated, throughally, on the second Sunday of every month.

Part of this is to check his uncertain allegiances. Part of this is to try and drill things into the boy's mind.

_Don't leave Konoha. Don't bite **anyone**. And, most of all, Do not leave your room without permission._

It is expected that the boy disobeys. Ibiki isn't quite sure that Naruto really understood any of the rules at all, that he ever heard them in that shifting thing the boy calls a mind.

At first, weary and frightened Chuunin guard the boy, from far across the street and as far away as they can possibly manage. Sometimes they aren't even there at all.

Which makes it all the eaiser for Naruto to disobey his rules. Jounin are graduated to the task of watching Naruto, but they too keep their distance.

And so Naruto wanders off into Wave Country.

When he comes back, just as casually as he left, as though he never even noticed that he left Konoha at all, ANBU are given the task of Naruto.

They are too afraid to keep him in their containment cells. They don't want him anywhere near them. They try to hide this, but it is what everyone feels, so it's not that unexpected.

Naruto is escorted down to the ANBU interrogation cells once a month, where Ibiki watches him and tries to break through to him, to break him of his madness.

It never works though, and Naruto messes with the potions and liquids meant to be tested on him - to try and heal him, to test their fatality - mixing them and drinking from his creations as though these things were something that could be consumed, until Ibiki is left just not knowing quite what to do.

The Kyuubi is in Naruto's head, and Ibiki has no idea how to get it out.

.

Sarutobi suffers in quiet manners, not because it is his job to do so, but mostly because he is too old by now to put his actual anguish into true words and actions.

_"Why is it that one should die and another live?"_ He asks in muted whispers to the piles of the dead. _"Why should my grandson be striken ill and perish, and yet I survive?"_

They give him no answer.

It isn't until much, much later, that he realizes he is glad they are silent. He grows to know Naruto far too well.

.

The Fourth was experimented on to find the cure, but in reality, he didn't help them.

Yondaime only died a slow, and very painful death while his body was put under torture by painful torture. Falling so far into himself that the Sandaime, Sarutobi, was left to try and rule Konoha the day after Yondaime was elected.

What little ruling there was to be done..

It was only Naruto's natural healing ablities that gave them the cure. All the Medic-nins had to do was inject it into him.

.

The ANBU following Iruka did, in fact, defeat Mizuki.

But Iruka nearly died trying to protect Naruto. He tries to save him, standing in front of him and taking the blows meant for the boy. He dodges arounds words and tactics, and shows himself to be a remarkable shinobi.

Mizuki is stronger than him, but Iruka holds his own until the ANBU arrive.

During the battle, Naruto chews on the forbidden scroll as if he is still a toddler, teething. And then sleeps on it, in the midst of kunari and shurken and raging jutsu.

It is not actually Iruka's limited skill, rusted from teaching, that holds Mizuki back. It is the way he fights around Naruto, walking a circle of the boy, always keeping in hand's reach.

Mizuki is afraid of spilling the Naruto's blood. He believes it will bleed through him like acid, that it will merely touch the surface of the landscape, and spread through it like the plague it is. This makes him angry, and he tells Naruto that he is nothing.

Mizuki tries to rise above his fear, but he runs.

He runs from Iruka, because he is running from Naruto.

.

Kakashi is teaching what's left of his team. Or trying to.

He teaches them tactics, he drills them on their stances, their techniques. He finally comes to their personal failings. Sasuke is obvious, Kiba only less glaringly so. He wants them to trust in each other, to trust themselves. He tells them, _"If you don't believe in something, it diminishes. If you fail to put your trust in something it ceases to exist."_

Naruto has taken to following the Jounin around, for whatever reason he does it. So he replies after this, almost there, almost in their world with them, _"I don't believe in Konoha."_

.

Diedara smiles down at the stolen child. "You are the human sacrifice. You are The _Jinchuriki_."


End file.
